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Section of model's waist removed in botched clothing advert

A clothing company has been criticised for its liberal use of photoshop, which has given a model a very tiny, and clearly unrealistic, waist.

As part of an ad for the clothing brand Ann Taylor Loft, a young model is seen wearing a two-piece swimsuit. However, upon close inspection, it's clear that her waist doesn't correlate with the size of her hips.

Evidently, a designer has been far to happy with the erasing tool, and has decided that an already skinny model needs to look even more waif-life.

While it might be a clear mistake, the fact that such extreme photoshopping is taking place is still worrying. Not only does it give anyone shopping for their clothes unrealistic ideas of how they will look, it also projects an unrealistic idea of how women's bodies should look too.

This isn't the first time a retailer has been accused of misusing the photo editing tool. Budget fashion store Target was heavily criticised for their liberal use of Photoshop in March, which showed a model who had her thighs clearly erased so as to give her a wider thigh gap.

More recently, the high-end luxury lingerie store La Perla was reprimanded for their store mannequins, which had protruding ribs. However, after taking note of the public outrage, La Perla removed the offending mannequins.

At the time of writing, Ann Taylor Loft still have the image up on their site. Just take a look here.

Should we be worried about this? Does over-photoshopping give people unrealistic ideas of what their bodies should look like? Or are we all clever enough to know that this is just an ad, without being affected by it?